Nationalist Party MP Marilena Gauci has said that serving in Parliament amounts to "over and above a full-time job" and has called for a restructuring of the institution, including proper research support for backbenchers and a discussion on whether the role should become full time.

Gauci, who entered Parliament through the gender corrective mechanism following the 2026 general election and subsequent casual elections, addressed criticism that MPs elected through the mechanism carry less legitimacy than those elected outright, insisting that her work, not her words, would answer the doubters.

"I believe rather than responding, what's important is that we allow our work to respond for us," she said in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday.

She acknowledged feeling additional pressure as a first-time candidate who fought a short campaign but said she accepted it as part of the job. "Politics isn't for the faint-hearted," she said, adding that her ambition was to win a broader mandate from voters at the next election "without the need for the gender mechanism".

Gauci holds an Honours degree in economics and a Master's in Behavioural Economics and previously worked on policy at the Malta Chamber of Commerce, including on EU-funding initiatives that took her regularly to Brussels. It was there, she said, that she first understood how deeply politics shapes everyday life - health, education, air quality - "even if someone doesn't care about politics".

Politics, she said, runs in her family; her mother previously served as a mayor. Gauci said she was later approached by the Nationalist Party leadership, first by former leader Bernard Grech and subsequently by deputy leader Alex Perici Calascione, to consider standing as a candidate, having already been involved with the party through event hosting and broadcasting work.

Outside politics, she is also a business owner, running Brillace Café alongside a small management team, and has built a long career in theatre, music and television. She said her stage background had shaped her ability to communicate complex political and economic messages to a general audience. "The same way you get people to engage with you and your message [on stage] ... I always say, if I'm going to explain this discourse, will she understand me?" she said, adding that theatre had also taught her resilience: "to put a smile on when you're broken... you cannot stop".

Asked what had surprised her most since taking up her seat, Gauci pointed squarely to the workload. "The amount of work, if you really take it seriously, is over and above a full-time job," she said, describing late nights spent independently analysing sector reports - including the film industry's economic report published in April - in the absence of dedicated research support.

She said she backed calls, including from colleagues, for Parliament's structure to be overhauled, with better resourcing and possibly a shift towards a full-time or hybrid role for MPs. "It will also help with having people who are great in politics stay on for longer terms, rather than doing five years, which completely exhausts you," she said.

She also called for greater discipline around attendance in the Chamber, noting that MPs tend to be present "in the beginning" of sittings before numbers thin out. She suggested MPs should be set measurable targets, similar to key performance indicators used in the workplace, covering areas such as the number of parliamentary questions tabled and the proportion of sittings attended.

Gauci said she had not yet managed to strike a workable balance between running her cafeteria and her parliamentary duties, though she hoped to establish clearer boundaries within six months of taking office. She credited her business team, including staff she described as a visual artist and a mathematician, with allowing her to sustain both her election campaign and her current parliamentary workload.

Running a small business, she said, had given her first-hand experience of bureaucracy that she now brings to policy discussions, citing planning delays, red tape with the Planning Authority and correspondence with Transport Malta - she said she had received a letter that day objecting to a proposed amendment, with associated costs running into thousands of euros. She linked this experience directly to her support for the reduction of VAT to 7% in the hospitality sector, arguing it eased financial pressure and encouraged full declaration of income.

Gauci said the Nationalist Party needed to stay the course on what she described as a "forward-looking" and "all-inclusive" direction set by its current leadership, cautioning against a conservative posture that judges people for holding different views, including on matters such as abortion. She said the party was also being pushed to modernise its communication, including a possible move towards Parliament having its own social media presence.

She argued that Parliament, and Cabinet in particular, would benefit from a wider range of professional backgrounds beyond law, saying voices from business, the arts and social policy made politicians "more relatable" to ordinary citizens. She contrasted this with what she described as overly legalistic language used by some parliamentarians, saying she had deliberately used plainer terms.

Gauci said this same instinct had shaped how she ran her own campaign. While she said she loved politics for the change it allows her to make, she was clear that she had no time for "savvy campaigning" or "propaganda type" tactics, which she believes take a toll on both public discourse and the health of candidates. She said she deliberately kept her campaign "humane" and free of subliminal messaging, and tried to maintain strong personal boundaries throughout, though she admitted the process still affected her wellbeing. "I would be lying if I say that it didn't affect my personal life or my health," she said, describing days that stretched to 18 or 20 hours during the campaign period. "That part of politics is not a part I love, not at all."

Looking ahead to the end of the current legislature, Gauci said she wanted her time in office to be measured by concrete change for people in the sectors she represents, rather than by political theatre. "I want to look back and say I've solved things," she said. "It has nothing to do with the money... To have a sell-out means that you've done something that worked."

Speaking about her first parliamentary intervention on her portfolio, the film industry, Gauci said she had detailed budget movements, citing a pre-budget allocation of €3.7 million that rose to €5 million, and a separate €400,000 budget that increased to €1.3 million. She said she had a number of meetings lined up with the Malta Producers Association and with local, independent producers, whom she described as central to preserving Malta's own screen storytelling.

"An international producer will never be able to speak the story of Malta as much as a Maltese producer can," she said.

Gauci said her ability to advocate for the sector stemmed from having worked within it herself, including a lead theatre role that involved four months of full-time rehearsals and 20 performances, for which she earned less than €1,000. She said she had once cut her hair for a role on direction from a production, and had worked on set without insurance cover.

"I know what it means to break your legs on set, but you don't have an insurance covering you," she said, adding that she had also witnessed crews working without access to air-conditioning, food or drink, and shifts that ran until 4am after being scheduled to end at midnight.

She said this direct experience shaped her approach to policymaking, arguing that ministers and MPs could only be effective on sector issues if they engaged with them "with heart" and stayed close to conditions on the ground.

Gauci pointed to individual cases she wants resolved by the end of the current legislature as markers of success, including artists who have waited over a year for payment, producers working out of unsuitable spaces such as their own living rooms for lack of an affordable studio, and industry workers experiencing sleep and health problems linked to working conditions.

"I want to look back and say... she had been chasing her pay for over a year-and-a-half, and she's finally paid," she said, describing this kind of concrete resolution, rather than political recognition, as her measure of a successful term.

Gauci's parliamentary brief also extends to the wider creative and cultural sector, which she views as inseparable from the film industry she was elected to represent.